1. Technical Field
The subject matter disclosed herein relates generally to electronic documents and specifically to methods, devices and systems for reading and displaying electronic documents.
2. Discussion of the Background
Two of the most popular modern tools are the smart phone and the digital book reader device. These handheld devices include specialized hardware devices such as the Amazon Kindle or the Barnes and Noble Nook. In addition these include software book readers such as the Apple iBooks for the iPad or the Kindle reader on the iPad or numerous other smart phone, digital tablet, and netbook devices. Such devices typically have a screen sizes up to approximately the size of a physical book page.
The size of a handheld device is frequently small for purposes of portability and cost. However, small size can be limiting in many respects. A handheld device may not effectively show an image that is larger than the physical device. Many handheld device solutions allow the user to zoom in and pan around a page to access more detail but such behavior loses the context of whatever one is looking at. This lack of display space makes existing devices more suited for casual sequential reading rather than interactive learning. The lack of display space can also be problematic when viewing large pictures such as architectural drawings, complex chemical structures, maps, tables, graphs or other materials.
Even without such specialized book needs, there may be times when someone reading a text or other book wants to refer to multiple pages simultaneously. On standard handheld devices, particularly on smartphones such as an iPhone, this is not possible because there is not enough display space. Furthermore, when presenting information to others a handheld device often requires passing the device around to facilitate seeing the information on the screen.
Given the foregoing, what is needed are methods, devices and systems for reading and displaying electronic documents that provide more viewable space.